To my fellow overthinkers: do you ever wish you could just…stay out of the loop?

And by loop, I mean the one that we create ourselves. The cycle. For those of you unfamiliar, it goes like this:

1. Become aware of a future thing
2. Initial Panic
3. Talk self off nonexistent ledge
4. Obsess over how to interact with future thing (options: do the thing, avoid at all costs, charge in headlong, tiptoe around it until you fall in backwards, get stuck in limbo)
5. The Second Panic (cause: all of the above options are incorrect)
6. Calm down
7. I SAID CALM DOWN AND I MEANT IT
8. Forget

Then you repeat that foolproof plan until you have a heart attack or take up hard drugs. (For legal reasons, that’s a joke. Also, 10 points to whoever gets that absurdly obscure reference.)

One of the internet’s favorite sayings seems to be “communication is key,” and yes, it is. It’s a good rule of thumb.

But most rules have a liiiiitle bit of room to bend.

And when it comes to me and my overthinking brain, sometimes what I need is some strategic withholding.

Sometimes…you really just need someone to keep you in the dark until absolutely necessary.

What? Has Lucy gone crazy? (Well, she IS talking about herself in the third-person again…)

But no, I’m dead serious.

Sometimes the best thing to happen to you is to get hit in the face with a curveball.

I like responsibility…

But I hate responsibility. You know what I mean?

Back when I was in Girl Scouts, I always liked leading the games, activities, or songs. But I’d absolutely be caught dead before I volunteered to do any of that.

I’d think about volunteering, sure. I used to know plenty of fun games and I was a dang good MC. And I liked to be in charge of events because then there’d be order, and not a million tiny children all disagreeing and scattering around the Camp Mariposa lot with no idea when to come back to do meal chores.

But in the grand tradition of my kind (overthinkers), the “thinking about volunteering” wouldn’t ever end.

There’s too much space, sometimes, between deciding to do something and actually doing it.

And likewise, the gap between preparation and procrastination is dangerously slim. Before you know it, you’re filibustering yourself worse than Leslie Knope. (A feat that shouldn’t be possible.)

So sometimes you just need to remove the option to deliberate–or have it removed for you by someone else. Not just anyone, mind you. This is a trust thing. A vulnerability thing. This is admitting to yourself that no, you can’t do things alone, and yes, sometimes someone else knows what’s best for you.

Don’t worry, I have receipts.

Enter…Star Wars?

Don’t worry, I’m not about to go on another (constructive and insightful) tirade.

But I am about to talk about Star Wars and, wait for it, a woman (GASP). But before the 40-year-old white men come for me again (a disturbing sentence out of context, I apologize), no, this isn’t about Rey.

This is about Bryce Dallas Howard. (And this is not a diss track, I wasn’t that kind of MC in Girl Scouts.)

When The Mandalorian came out, my parents and I watched the behind-the-scenes.

There was a lot about the music, the concept art, the practical effects–it was pretty great, I’m a sucker for some good BTS footage (let the record show I’m not talking about K-pop).

In the first season BTS, Jon Favreau tells Bryce Dallas Howard that they basically threw her in the deep end of the pool. He said that the episode they gave her was “such a difficult episode to do, and we were like, we gotta pick the new person who’s never done this before. ‘Cause they won’t know how hard it is–what we’re asking her to do.”

There were so many things to keep track of in that episode: forests, water, big shooting mechs, background extras. “It was too much,” Favreau said. “It was too much to do.”

Howard then joked that she did it with “zero support.”

(This is all in the very first episode of season 1 of Disney Gallery / Star Wars: The Mandalorian. This convo starts at 20:16.)

But that conversation has stuck with me for the last 6-ish years.

Those are two great points that they made:

1. Going in blind can be a good thing
2. You can’t do hard things without support

What Favreau said made me realize that we can always get in our own way, no matter how experienced we are at something. And sometimes, that experience is actually what causes us to freeze. To get into that overthinking loop.

When you know from firsthand experience that something is hard, and you have ample time to dwell on that fact…the impossibility of that task becomes debilitating. I’m struggling with this exact thing as I write my new novel. This is my third big project, and by now I know how hard this thing is that I’m trying to accomplish. I’m working on deconstructing the idea that I’ve bitten off more than I can chew.

Because when you go in without the predecided conclusion that a task is impossible, you’ll surprise everyone (maybe even yourself) about how you go about accomplishing said task. That’s pretty much the definition of thinking outside the box, isn’t it? Not realizing the box was even there in the first place?

Christian Writer Con 2026

Did you attend CWC26?

If you did, you would’ve seen quite a bit of me. I introduced the conference each morning it ran, hosted some Q&As, managed some of the author video sessions. I also helped run a workshop on how to write a good short story.

The conference started on a Friday. I knew for weeks that I’d be a part of that short story session. I kept asking Brad, my mentor, what else was involved with running the story session. I asked a bunch of questions, and he always said, “Don’t worry about that. We’ll talk about it later.”

“Later” finally came on Thursday. Yes, Thursday. The day before the conference began. That’s when Brad told me that I was going to be doing a whole lot more than just helping run ONE workshop.

Suddenly I was that Girl Scout game MC again, except this time I wasn’t talking to a bunch of eight-year-old girls.

At first came the split-second panic of “What?! I can’t do that!!!!”

But if Brad thought I could, then I guess I could trust that.

And the whole conference was the next day, so it’s not like I had that much time to think about it. I focused my energy on getting the prep work done that needed to be done, and not on whether or not I could do it all in the first place.

And obviously, it wasn’t just me in a room by myself. I didn’t lead everything! My fellow apprentices did an amazing job and also wore many hats. Brad was always around to help with whatever was needed. He pushed me (all of us, I think) into the deep end, but he made sure I didn’t drown.

And you know what? It went well! And I had a blast doing it.

Who can you trust to push you?

“That’s all fine and good,” you say, “but what if it’s too late? What if I’m already out of the dark? What if it’s too late for someone to push me in without me being aware of the depths?”

I hear you. The loop is a quick snare–it snaps on like a bear trap.

The easiest way I’ve found to break out of the overthinking loop is this: Tell someone.

Tell someone! Not every decision you make has to be kept to yourself. You can ask for guidance and assistance. When Bryce Dallas Howard joked that she did everything with zero support…she was joking.

Who can you trust to push you, either before or after you realize you need the push?

Because sometimes? The less you know, the better.

Have you ever been pushed into the deep end?

Yes? No? Share your story in the comments!

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